Watching Residual Waves

Hurricane Bill swifted his way up the Atlantic sealine last week. Hurricane season, while always a serious threat, rarely gets out of hand in Charleston. Instead, it is known around here as the only time of year that a surfer can really see what it is like to surf - because this is the only time of year when the waves that are substantial enough to carry a surf board for longer than 3 seconds before collapsing into the rubble and sand.


On this particular evening, the waves had been reporting to the bouys at 6 - 8 feet. Normally, they are about 2-3 feet. The difference, to a local like myself, was fantastically spectacular.

As you can see, the sunset wasn't all that bad, either.




It took me over an hour to finally give in to the seascape. As I've gotten used to having it always as my easy escape, I have begun take it for granted.

But, there is definitely something soothing and that-which-evades-the-concept-of-time-or-obligation about the ocean. The smell of the saltwater, the sting of its spray as the waves coil into themselves, the constant and loud churn; somewhere in all of that sensory experience, it is very easy to lose yourself.

And losing yourself, only to find this - well...that is what makes life bearable. The pristine beauty, the laser pink sky that holds the setting sun. The ocean wind pushing willowy tufts of grass, as if marking its path northward, star-bound.

This only happened metaphorically.

This bird, he had gotten himself into a bad situation. Somehow, when I opened the door, he flew inside, into the house. Attempting to gain quick relief from his new confines, he quickly mistook the window over the sink for the sky.

I heard a thud, then the soft flutter of feathers. Then another, smaller thud, then again, back to the sound of his wings in flight. By the third failed attempt at exit, I was able to scoop him into my hands.

His brown wings pumped ineffectively into my palms and he tried to bite me, but without teeth, it just felt like a small pinch of a less-than-vicious beak.

I scurried to the open door, out from under the carport, and into the sunshine. Then, I paused before opening my fingers, just to look at his feathery little head. The thought ran through my mind to cherish this moment, for it is rare to have the warm body of a wild bird struggling to be free of your grip, squirming around in your hands. It is rare to be close to such an ephemeral little woodland spirit.

So, I stood still for a brief time, looking down at him, studying the colors of the trees in his feathers. Then I let him go, and watched desperately as he took to flight, free, free, free!

Little did I know you were standing there behind me with your gun. Before he had time to disappear into the deciduous canopy, you shot him down.

The craziest part is that, when I asked you why you had just done such a thing, you denied having done it.

Meek Little Spider

At my office job, there is a door that you use to walk into the building. It has a knob. During the hours of 8:00 - 5:00, that door knob is always unlocked.

However.

1 out of 15 people (on average, I've been in this building for a year) who try to open that door cannot seem to figure out how to turn the door knob in such a way that it opens the door.

The problem is that the knob has a very small hitch. You can sense it when you are turning the knob, there is a slight stickiness to it. But, if you keep turning, even when you sense the small hesitation of the knob, you find that it continues to turn and that you did not break it.

Most people plow right through it. However, the 1 in 15...they just can't seem to bring themselves to try just a little harder.

It drives me bananas. There is little I loathe more in life than encountering a person who is an adult and is still afraid to exist in the world as a physical and autonomous entity. Never is it a male who is afraid to turn that door knob. Every time the would be enterer is stumped, it turns out she is female. Every time, she has been between the ages of 18 - 30.

Every time one of these girls can't figure out how to turn a door knob in order to open a door, I step outside onto the broad porch of my office, and instruct her to "keep turning the knob, the door is unlocked".

Every time, I want to place my hands on her shoulders, fix her gaze on mine, and gently remind her:

1 - Stop being so willfully invisible.
2 - Do not allow that man to wish you into silence were it that you would not laugh so loud in public when you are eating dinner.
3 - If some unsolicited injustice falls upon your path, do not swallow your rage, nor should you ever submerge your despair at the misfortune of others.

For the love of Christ, please just stop being so afraid to fail.

These are also things I tell myself on a daily basis. Because if there is anything that is true to the core about me, it is that I am afraid to exist in the world as a physical and autonomous entity. And I know that is just total bullshit, and I keep hoping I can change.

Mountain Girl

Whenever I look up at the night sky, I think of my dad. Sometimes, not in any intelligible way. Sometimes, I'll just sort of feel that part of my spine stirring, and I'll know that somewhere without words, I am thinking of my dad.

When I was young, he worked the hoot owl shift in the coal mine. Mine # 52, U.S. Steel. He was a shift foreman. He wore a white hard hat that had a light on it. He came home with coal dust stuck in his blonde eyelashes.

He loved the night sky. Not a formally educated man, he always wanted to know more about them. Once he bought a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica and poured over the sections about the stars. Then he would take me out on summer nights and teach me what he had learned. How the clusters moved, how, if we had a telescope, we could see one that is behind another.

I have the stars paired with ligtening bugs, coal, and diamonds.

Lately I have missed the heavy perfume of the mountains. The deciduous trees in late August are as green as emeralds. Their gray bark breathes out a scent that is floral and masculine, and it sort of smells like Coco Chanel. In West Virginia, where I'm from, the trees far out number the people. They are sometimes much more enjoyable to be around - the way they catch the swifts, the swallows of wind as clean, fragrant air rushes over East River Mountain.

Every morning, in the winter, thick clouds pour down the mountain. They are the color of lavendar flowers mixed with snow.

Conventional Wisdom

He said that magic haunts the edges of the everyday. I totally believe that. That is, as much as any thirty year old single, childless woman can believe that magic haunts the edges of the everyday.

There is a lot of talk out there, people like Oprah, or my counselor - well basically it's common cultural knowledge nowadays - that you can control how you interpret what happens to you in your life.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and disagree. Completely.

While it is true that you can try to tell yourself a different story about what really happened, you will never believe it. You were born as a wilful animal, and that is what you will stay. And by wilful, I mean that your heart rules your head, and your heart is hard to convince of anything other than that which is pure, brute, inmaleable, real.

I am inherently rebelious. Even with the most stupid of things, my immediate response is to rebel. For instance, I refuse to address strangers on the street. No I will not say hello to you because I do not know you and your rules confine me I NEED FREEDOM FROM THE TYRANNY OF YOUR NEED TO SAY HELLO FOR NO IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZABLE GOD-DAMN REASON.

So maybe that's it. I just can't change this animal nature. If so many people had not offered the advice to try to change my perceptions of reality, maybe I would have tried it on my own. I dunno. But now, it's too far gone. I'm too wiley, too contrary. Eff you, I say to all the wiser men and women of the world. Eff you. No matter what I tell myself to think of my circumstances, it does not change the cold, hard fact that I can barely pay my mortgage and still afford to buy food to nourish my body.

I don't know how to change that interpretation of reality without literally losing my mind.

Conventional wisdom is, as it turns out, really, really stupid and not at all useful for people who are out here on the margins.

Tin Foil

In the evening, all the birds are singing

deep purple rolls accross the horizon

and the weather man is talking of tornadoes,

funnel clouds and hard-candy hail

I look up at a striking ray of light

solid like a shining platinum sword

beaming down onto the street

burning out from beyond the rounded belly

of a pregnant, black cloud

up ahead, there are two skies

the blue sky

and the violet sky

divided in stark contrast

by a veil of heavy rain

Things I should say, but then I don't.

It is one of my most firmly held reasonings that, when someone has been a harbinger of beauty in your life, the right thing to do is tell him so.

You were a part of my life at an important locus.

I was busy living, and a day was approaching - a day that marked an important thing that should have happened, but didn't because fate reached in through the fabric of space-time and did what fate will do. Fate blew the whole thing up, tore down the house, stole all of the diamonds and pearls; some call it creative destructionism. It's just the way of the world.

I knew I couldn't avoid my own notion of time, and how it passes, nor how certain latitudes, specific longitudes, will pull back, aim, and shoot a straight and true arrow right through my heart.

Somehow, it happened that you were there at that point in my life. I spent some time listening to you, asking you about your life. You are quite remarkable, and somewhat terrifying. But that time spent with you put me in touch with my most authentic self. You were gracious and you allowed me to be the person who is still enamored with the poetry of mundane things, like humid summer nights, and grapes off the vine. You were magnanimous, and welcomed my discussion about the things that people normally don't talk about. Death, the meaning of life, the evasive search for joy or peace.

You took my heavy, dark atmosphere in stride, and you made me feel confident that, along with all of my other qualities - well, this part can be tolerated, or even accepted as an ecentricity that is partially endearing, and unwittingly disarming. You allowed me the space to be as big and deep as I really am, and not a lot of people will put up with that.

Most people want everyone around them to be small, confined, and easy.

*** Wait, who are you? ***

That is quite a spread you have there, it's like I can almost see the fabric of the universe bending around your mass.

Maybe I am imagining things. Maybe you were just telling me what I wanted to hear.

But it's not important, because in this story I've got going on in my head, you were a harbinger of beauty in my life. You were a witness to something magnificent, and you didn't even know, because it was all invisible.

This old heart of mine, though, had a brief reprieve from grief. And I just think you ought to know that I am so very thankful that you were kind to me.

A Very Old Lady

This is the Angel Oak Tree on Johns Island, SC. She is said to be around 700-1000 years old. (In SC, we don't worry about being too scientific, what's a few hundred years difference?)

As you can see, she is pretty large. She also has crazy branches that twist, and look as though they are writhing very, very, very slowly.

Live oak trees have unusual branching habits. They grow toward the sky, but after a certain point, they start heading back toward the ground. The Angel Oak is a perfect example of this wonderful tendency, as many of her dozens of coiling branches snake accross the leaf-littered earth underneath.

Live oak trees are evergreen. Their leaves are about one inch long and shaped like an almond.

This is one of my favorite places in Charleston. Admission is free. You can bring a notebook and draw or write poetry, and people actually leave you alone.

The kind of people who visit this tree are my favorite kind. They are secret naturalists. They are mystified by the simple green world that surrounds them. They whisper to each other because you can hear the Angel Oak softly swaying and breathing, and it just makes you want to be quiet and listen.

The Angel Oak lives on a barrier island of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you imagine how many severe hurricanes she has survived?

Many iterations of the concept "lost"

there is a large distance
between any two given people
songs have been written about it
"You say toe-may-toe, I say tah-mah-toe"

you and I are like the rest of them
we lie side by side in the dark

in a relationship that involves a bed
there is a cycle, easily demarcated

at first, the two lie entertwined
so happy, at last, to not be alone
welcoming dreams, eager for morning

eventually, though, the two end up
back to back, gripping a soft pillow
or nothing at all, dreading day break

if I had a genie in a bottle,
who would grant me just one wish,
I would wish for the kind of love that,
even through the test of time,
would not find the two of us
back to back

when instead we could spend the spinning silk of each black, starry night
locked in a kiss

If I could go back in time

If I could hold her close and kiss her, I would do it so hard, and so fast, and so fully, she wouldn't know what hit her.

I would wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tightly, and I would hold on for too long - far too long.

In the best part of myself, I imagine love as a shimmering, sunset-colored, melted metal. I can pool it in my hands and throw it into the air, and it splashes all over the object of my affection. It isn't too warm or too cool, it's perfect, and it tastes like cane sugar.

Sometimes, love and it's remarkable essence can be a moving, aurora type of vision. Gently dancing on the horizon, no matter where I direct my gaze. It's like the Mona Lisa, it follows you wherever you go, and it makes you happy, although you couldn't exactly articulate why.

I would tell her to hold on tight. Prepare to scream, full lung, full voice, full from the belly - scream and be heard, don't be frail, don't be invisible, don't be without your voice and your breathe. Say what you need to say.

The people who love her will be paralyzed with fear. It will enrage her. It will also break her heart because she will see, in their inability, just how much they love her. But I would tell her that she should not let their fear silence her, because she will be the one who will live, day-in-day-out with the consequences of her choices. Or lack thereof.

She will be the one who will wake up with peices missing. She will be the one who will not understand why her spine can't catch up with her brain.

I would tell her to try to hold onto her own vision of love, no matter how ethereal it will become. Because sometimes, it will be the only thing that makes sense anymore.

Love for the brutal, beautiful world that holds her captive, her feet never more than a few inches from the earth - her lungs never free from oxygen chains - her heart never free to stop moving.

When I woke up with part of my skull gone forever, it changed the animal part of me that I didn't even know was there. I woke up and I found myself walking on a tenuous wire, high above a vast and gorgeous and trecherous canyon. I've not found my way off of it yet.

But I learned something very important. I learned to recognize the love I have for the brutal and beautiful world. The brutal, beautiful world. A gift and a curse that I lived through it, to be left incomplete, but somehow enhanced.

I would tell her these things, and she wouldn't understand until after it happened, and then she would be too far on her own journey to be soft about it anymore. Battling it out each day, her survival, suffering desperately, to abate the lonliness and isolation, the fear and bitterness.

She will end up fighting savagely to hold on to the glimmering love she sometimes will feel for this brutal and beautiful world.

Where the milk thistle grows

To say that she has gotten used to living with lonliness is not exactly right. There is a place of nowhere that she goes to when it gets too dark, too terrifying, too bleak. She disappears, that is the right term. She disappears instead of being lonely.

There are certain experiences that change the make up of a person. A lot of wise men throughout history have claimed that people don't ever really change. But sometimes, that is not true. Certain things can happen that will shift the composition of a human soul. A generally out going, glass-half-full kind of person can shift into the kind of person who wishes for invisibility.

That is what happened to her. A long chain of losses, and then she fell through fifty thousand feet of clouds, into a new version of herself. Someone she is still trying to understand, fighting to overcome.

They diagnosed her with post traumatic stress disorder. But, really, it is just a medical term for what your grandmother would call a broken heart. Or, a broken spirit. Her mother told her to try to find God again. Her therapists told her to meditate, focus on the good things, that all of the sorrow is a learned habit that can be unlearned. The internet told her to manifest her dreams, in a technique called "The Way".

She thinks they are all full of shit. They don't know what it is like to watch your lifelong held view of the world suddenly shift, and be pulled out into the universe like saltwater taffy. All new colors, unrecognizable shapes, unintelligable languages - they don't know what it is like to become an alien in the world that made you.

Every day, she greets the morning, as it carries with it a basket of sorrow and says to her, "Here you go. Here is the sunshine pouring through your windows. Here is the hunger in your gut. Here is your bottomless sense of loss. Do what you can with it."

She wishes for a quiet field of wildflowers, high in the mountains, the one she knows is there, where she was born. She thinks of high noon, and a warm, dry wind. Away from the lowcountry, the salt air. Away from people everywhere, watching. She wants to go anywhere but nowhere. Anywhere but here, today, right now.